2007-02-04 Should health care systems in Britain respond to a non-human outbreak?  British public health officials may have reminded themselves that H5N1 has not yet made the jump from bird to human, as reports of 2,500 turkey deaths on a single farm reached them. Early today Reuters reported that the entire flock of turkeys at a farm run by Europe's largest turkey producer would be slaughtered -- all 159,000 birds.  Experts were puzzled by the outbreak, which occurred in a single "sealed" shed on the farm in the county of Suffolk. H5N1 is not a human pandemic, but some estimates indicate that more than 200 million domestic chickens, ducks, geese and, now, turkeys have been infected, or killed as part of mass prevention measures.

From the comfortable distance of the Americas, where birds have yet been found with H5N1 infections, there may be an understandable desire for more details. How long did it take to diagnose the infection?  Why was this particular shed, and this particular farm affected?  What was the migratory bird link that must be assumed to have been the link to H5N1 in Asia or eastern Europe? And if this was a new strain that was to affect humans, how long would it have taken to connect the dots?